‘Kraftwerk Who?’ Pioneering ’50s Synthesizer unearthed in French Barn

So there Dr. Mick Grierson was, wandering around a French barn, minding his own business when all of a sudden he happened upon an antique: one of the earliest modern synthesizers. Grierson, a professor at Goldsmiths University in London did what any expert in the field of electronic music would do, and whisked it back to the motherland for restoration. The Oram “Oramics” Synthesiser (sic) was built by Daphne Oram in 1957, a year before she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to research and develop electronic music. Political wrangling within the corporation forced her to leave in 1959, and she retreated to a farm in nearby Kent to tinker with her invention. After her departure, the Workshop shot to fame for creating the original electronic theme to Doctor Who. In order to create music on the Oram, a composer painted waveforms directly onto 35mm film strips which were fed into the machine. Inside, photo-electronic cells read the light pattern and interpreted it as sound. Check out the video to see the arrival of the machinery back into England where it’ll be on display all the way through December 2012. If you’re really interested you can tap Dr Grierson’s homebrewed Oramics iPhone app (linked below for your downloading pleasure) to create your own futuristic theme songs, ’57-style.

Continue reading ‘Kraftwerk Who?’ Pioneering ’50s Synthesizer unearthed in French Barn

‘Kraftwerk Who?’ Pioneering ’50s Synthesizer unearthed in French Barn originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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1DollarScan Scans And Digitizes Your Books For You “For A Dollar”

1dollarscan

Having old media digitized to get more space in the house, preserve them or simply make them portable isn’t exactly a new trend. But some startups, like Peggybank in the case of videos and photos, still find ways to stand out. And now a new company called 1DollarScan tries to do the same for books, documents, pictures and just about anything that’s printed on paper – through pricing.

1DollarScan is the US equivalent of a service in Japan called Bookscan, which is the largest of its kind in that country and hit several millions of US dollars in revenue within a year, according to the namesake company (in fact, the service is so successful that some customers in Japan currently have to wait for months to get their material digitized).

1DollarScan works in the same way as Bookscan: after receiving physical books or other printed material from customers, the company scans the papers, and converts them into PDFs or DVDs. That’s what similar services do, too, but as 1DollarScan’s company name suggests, prices start at just $1 (for ten photos or 100 pages in a book, for example).

The obvious idea here is to address a bigger market than competitors by making mass-scanning and digitizing more affordable. 1DollarScan tells me they are building on their experience in Japan and “radically” apply Toyota’s kaizen method to perfect operation and keep costs down in their “factory” in the US market.

Launched last week in the US, it’s too early to tell if 1DollarScan can deliver in terms of quality as well, but if it’s any indication, the Japanese parent company already filed for a patent to protect its (actually pretty impressive) device-specific resolution adjustment method (here‘s a video in Japanese that shows the scanning process). On its website, 1DollarScan says that digitized content can be viewed on all Android phones and tablets, essentially all iOS devices, the Kindle 3, Sony’s PRS-650, and the Nook.

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1DollarScan Scans And Digitizes Your Books For You “For A Dollar”

Building a Hacker Culture in Uruguay

Uruguay’s a pretty nifty place, a country most people don’t know exists in South America. At OSCON 2011 I gave a talk about some of the cool projects the country’s started, like giving out laptops to all the school children and making every landline in the country a free internet connection. Here are the slides: Building a Hacker Culture in Uruguay – OSCON 2011 View more presentations from Rabble .

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Building a Hacker Culture in Uruguay

La Historia Secreta de Twitter y El Modelo de los Lean Startups

On Tuesday i gave a talk about the creation of twitter and lean startups. It got some coverage in the local media , and people wanted to see the slides. I was told that it was streamed and perhaps even there is a copy floating around online. If i find the video, i’ll post that here too. The talk and slides were in spanish. La Historia Secreta de Twitter & El Modelo de los Lean Startups View more presentations from Rabble . .

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La Historia Secreta de Twitter y El Modelo de los Lean Startups

The Blackberry Shift: From the executives to the urban poor

It happened without us even noticing. Blackberry’s user base has shifted. From business executives to the urban poor. It happened so fast that it’s hardly been noticed in the media. RIM may not even know it themselves. This past weekend the riots in the UK were not organized via sms, nor twitter, or facebook, but by BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) . If you were say, “a riot organized via blackberry,” you might assume it was a riot of the bankers, it happened in Argentina in 2001 , but that’s not what was happening. It was the poor, the underclass, who was using blackberry. It’s not just the UK. While the riots were happening I was in Medellín, Colombia, to give a talk on lean startups. There as well, the blackberry is the phone of choice for the urban masses. With BBM you avoid sms charges, get a nice smart messenger phone, and it’s cheap. Turns out in Colombia you have some money you get an Android, and if you’re well to do, you get an iPhone. What happened is a while ago RIM decided to move in to the pre-paid segment. You can now get a blackberry for cheap with a flat rate data plan. Because people don’t use blackberries for streaming video or music they don’t tax the network as much. The blackberry is becoming the new sidekick. A tight, messaging focused phone on a budget. The funny thing is, everybody’s been thinking, because RIM’s getting crushed on the high end, they’re going to go out of business. But perhaps what will happen is that they’ll replace the feature phone. Fighting with Nokia for bottom three billion. I suspect that the RIM executives had a meeting with their advertisers which was something like the Mad Men pitch to Admiral Television about them focusing on the African American market. After a decade of being the tool of choice for the upwardly mobile and a symbol of globalization, it’ll be a tough transition to tool of the masses. That said, perhaps there is a good long term market for RIM to replace feature phones with messaging phones.

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The Blackberry Shift: From the executives to the urban poor

Vuzix Wrap 1200 brings 3D to the glasses for $500


3D glasses are nothing new — we’ve been tossing on RealD specs at the theater for at least a couple of years. But in typical Vuzix fashion, the Wrap 1200 brings a pair of displays directly to the glasses, simulating a 75-inch 3D screen. Tiny 852 x 480-pixel monitors display native 16:9 content on the three-ounce specs, and iPhone and component video cables are included in the box, letting you plug in to a variety of content (there’s no HDMI support, however). The display supports side-by-side and anaglyph 3D, and you can also revert back to 2D content if things don’t pan out as expected. The Vuzix Wrap 1200 is rated at three hours of playback with the pair of included rechargeable AA batts, or you can substitute lithium ion batteries for up to seven hours of use. Jump past the break for the full rundown from Vuzix, or hit up the source link to grab your own pair for $500.

Continue reading Vuzix Wrap 1200 brings 3D to the glasses for $500

Vuzix Wrap 1200 brings 3D to the glasses for $500 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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